Agriculture and Food Applications

Why use an Avantes spectrometer system for your Agriculture and Food applications?

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• Specify colour & quality of food

• Reliability in the field by robust technology and simplicity.

• High production yield enabled by fast spectroscopy for in-line monitoring systems
  (High sensitivity, fast data-acquisition/-transfer)

• Wide range of customised probes and spheres

• Avantes engineers to support your OEM development, from component to total design

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Solutions for Agriculture and Food Applications

The need for greater efficiency, quality and safety in agricultural production is increasingly being addressed through the introduction of spectroscopic techniques during and after production and processing.  The rugged and field deployable characteristics of compact, dispersive array spectrometers along with the inherent benefits of fibre optic sampling are driving increasing adoption of this technology in agricultural operations. Avantes works with a variety of agricultural customers ranging from researchers through to industrial operations. 

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Fruit Sorting

Fruit sorting operations often utilise multivariate analysis of spectra in the NIR 850-1100nm to derive sugar (⁰Bx or brix).  Avantes AvaSpec-ULS2048X16 and AvaSpec-ULS2048X16 back-thinned CCD spectrometers are ideal instruments for this diffuse reflection application, where sensitivity and high speed are required.

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Grain Measurement

The third and second overtone of the near infrared can be used to determine organic nitrogen and  protein through the characterisation of the C-H, N-H, and O-H stretching vibrations in these spectral regions. These bands are weakly absorbing, which has the advantage of facilitating unprocessed grain seed, because low absorbance means that the material is mostly transparent allowing for deeper penetration.  The downside to these bands that is that they product low signal intensity and this creates a demand for good signal to noise performance.  The  Avantes AvaSpec-ULS2048X16 and AvaSpec-ULS2048X16 backthinned CCD spectrometers are ideal instruments for this measurement.  For even higher performance into the 2nd overtone, the AvaSpec-NIR256-1.7 instrument is a very affordable InGaAs sensor instrument. 

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Leaf/Foliage Measurements

Direct leaf measurement provides for the characterisation of a variety of plant health parameters.  The AvaSpec-Mini is an ideal instrument for handheld measurements such as leaf reflection or transmission.

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Crop/Plant Health & Intelligent Fertiliser Application

Chlorophyll measurements in the visible and near infrared regions can be used to approximate plant health using reflection techniques on plant foliage.  The AvaSpec-128-USB2 spectrometer is particularly well suited to this application due to its high speed and quantum efficiency in the region from 600-1100nm.  The AvaSpec-128-USB2 can acquire spectra at 8000 scans per second.  Integrated systems have been developed with the AvaSpec-128-USB2 to measure chlorophyll in real time and intelligently apply fertilisers to crops based upon sophisticated chemometric models while driving through a field at 40 kilometers per hour.

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Dairy Product Characterisation

Dairy operations are of some of most demanding for spectroscopic process control.  Near infrared spectroscopy in the second and third overtones can be used to measure a variety of parameters of interest for the dairy industry such as moisture content, solids non-fat, fat, protein and adulterants.  Avantes NIRline instruments are ideally suited to this application with 3-stage thermo-electric cooling and fast numerical aperture optical designs to maximise spectral acquisition speeds.  The AvaSpec-NIR256-1.7-TEC and AvaSpec-NIR512-1.7-TEC are ideal candidates for this application.